Forum Thread - Merging multiplies the embedded fonts

We use Merger to stitch together a set of documents into one, combined PDF file to send to our printer. One thing we noticed that the embedded fonts for each individual document get added to the merged document, even if they are the same.

For example, file1.pdf used the Calibri font and is embedded. file2.pdf also used the Calibri font and that is embedded in that pdf. When I create a merged document of the two, I get a duplicate set of Calibri embedded fonts. Now imagine combining a hundred or more individual pdfs... the file size is huge, 80% of which is the embedded fonts, all of which are dupes.

Is there a way to prevent this? Or at the very least, programmatically then remove the duplicate embedded fonts?

Currently it is not possible to consolidate or optimize the fonts while merging the PDFs. We will add this feature to our wish list for consideration, but we do not have an exact time line on when it will be implemented. It is also not possible to remove the duplicate embedded fonts programmatically.

Thank you for the response. Please do add this to your feature-to-do-list... and as soon as possible!

I created a test MergeDoc by appending three base pdfs, and looping on those same 3 pdfs a few times in a loop. I got a resulting PDF that was over 600k; and if you looked at the Document Properties, Fonts Used... dialog, you could see all the repeating references.

In Acrobat Pro, I simple resaved the file as an "Optimized" PDF, making sure I selected the “Subset all embedded fonts” option on the Fonts panel... that took the file down to less than 200k (1/3 of the size!). And, again, looking at the Document Properties dialog, the Fonts Used tab was all cleaned up.

We routinely create MergeDocs on a daily basis (for printing customer documentation, etc.), and are now generating 50mb files. Every day. You can imagine that cutting that down by two-thirds would be extremely helpful.

Is there any update on when this might be worked into DynamicPDF? We use your library because we automate the creation of docs... a lot of them, every day. So this would really make a huge difference in storage requirements for us.

We are exploring the possibility of implementing this feature (font optimization) for next version (v9). Once this feature is implemented we would update any related forums with details and offer beta version for testing.

With regards to timeline, I just want to point out that we have recently released v8 and are nowhere near releasing v9.

The font optimizing feature has not yet been implemented (it is still on our wish list though). It still has a realistic opportunity to make it into a future version but nothing concrete is planned for it at this time.

We did look into the possibility of implementing font optimization for v9 but it turned out to be a very complex feature. We do have plans to implement it for a future version but at this moment we do not know when that will happen.